“Let’s not be intimidated. We’re on the side of just and peaceful struggle,” Mr. Anwar told the crowd. He accused Mr. Najib’s ruling National Front of a vote-rigging campaign that he characterized as the death of democracy in Malaysia.

“This is a heated fight between the people and corrupt government,” he said.

The fight is also personal—the latest in a long feud that pits Mr. Anwar, a humble-born opposition figurehead who has led calls for reform for much of the past 15 years, against Mr. Najib, the British-educated son of the Malaysia’s second prime minister.

For years, the two have maneuvered for influence at the highest levels of power. Now, the personal chess match is showing signs of turning into a street brawl that could determine the future of one of Asia’s most complex and potentially highest-growth countries.

“National reconciliation needs to begin with Mr. Najib and Mr. Anwar,” said Karim Raslan, a Malaysian newspaper columnist and political observer. “Unfortunately they can’t stand one another.”

At Wednesday’s rally, Mr. Anwar’s repeated attacks on Mr. Najib elicited wild applause from the crowd. Surrounding the stadium were thousands more protesters who couldn’t fit inside. Traffic jams choked roads and interchanges, though motorcycles zipped around the area waving opposition flags.

Mr. Anwar has said his party is planning to petition Malaysian courts to rerun Sunday’s voting in disputed districts. He alleges that many voters couldn’t find their names on electoral rolls, or found that others had already voted in their place. “They’ve stolen the election,” he said in an interview Tuesday, amid planning for Wednesday’s rally and others across the country in coming days.

Mr. Najib denied Mr. Anwar’s allegations. He also ridiculed a separate Anwar accusation that government supporters had flown as many as 40,000 people around Malaysia in a bid to pad the voter rolls in marginal seats.

Electoral fraud “is one of the things they played up in the days leading to the election,” Mr. Najib said in an interview Tuesday. “Some people, even professionals, believed we were prepared to cheat. No.”

Mr. Anwar enjoys broad backing. His opposition alliance won the popular vote, securing 50% of the ballot by pledging to remove race-based quotas for the majority but poorer ethnic-Malay community in this mostly Muslim country of 28 million.

The incumbent Mr. Najib, who has espoused a more cautious approach to change, won 47% of the popular vote. But he won 60% of the seats in parliament, thanks to heavy support in more conservative rural areas, which have disproportionately higher numbers of legislators than urban districts.

The scion of an aristocratic family, Mr. Najib was first elected to parliament at the age of 23. When Abdullah Badawi stepped down as prime minister in 2009 after a poor showing in elections the previous year, Mr. Najib took the position and quickly rebranded the premiership, loosening some of Malaysia’s race barriers and opting for a presidential style that focused heavily on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Mr. Anwar, by contrast, was born to a hospital porter in northern Malaysia and made his name as an Islamist student radical, shocking his colleagues when he joined the National Front. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming finance minister in 1991 and then deputy prime minister under his mentor, then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Mr. Anwar challenged his boss at the height of Asia’s 1997-98 financial crisis and was sacked from his post in 1998. Later, Mr. Anwar was prosecuted for corruption and sodomy, and spent six years in jail. The conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Mr. Anwar faced similar charges again in 2008, when one of his former aides leveled sodomy accusations against him—allegations that emerged publicly after the accuser had visited Mr. Najib.

Mr. Najib said he didn’t encourage the accuser to come forward, leaving it to the man’s own discretion. Mr. Anwar was acquitted in January 2012, after a long and frequently lurid trial that he complained was a conspiracy to smear his reputation.

In 2009, Mr. Anwar presented to reporters a private detective, Balasubramaniam Perumal, who declared in a signed statement that Mr. Najib had a sexual relationship with a Mongolian model and translator, Altantuya Shaariibuu. Ms. Shaariibuu had been murdered in 2006, her body blown up with plastic explosives, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Najib denied he had known her. After making his initial declaration, Mr. Balasubramaniam retracted his testimony. Two policemen were convicted in 2009 for killing Ms. Shaariibuu. Both men appealed.

The rivalry’s latest iteration could lead to legal action over who is Malaysia’s rightful leader as well as sustained protests.

“Both Mr. Anwar and Mr. Najib are under strain,” said Bridget Welsh, a political-science professor at Singapore Management University and an expert on Malaysian politics. “But the key is who will be the most willing to step out and be a statesman.”

On May 5th, you came out by the millions and called out in a single voice that you wanted change. Change from a corrupt regime of UMNO-BN that has held on to power for more than five decades. It was a voice that was strong and clear. To the UMNO-BN leaders, you told them: Enough! Enough of corruption and abuse of power! Enough of bad governance and mismanagement of the nation's wealth! Let Pakatan Rakyat take over now. But they refused to leave because they want to hold on to power at all costs. So, they cheated and used all kinds of deceit to silence your voice. Working hand in glove with the Elections Commission, they resorted to all kinds of fraudulent ways and declared themselves the winner.

By this act of blatant fraud and cheating, they turned the brightest hour in our history into its darkest. But last night, hundreds of thousands of you – Malaysians from all races and walks of life, young and old – turned up to show your outrage against the injustice and fraud committed. You showed your courage and determination. You braved the traffic jams, walked kilometres on end and stood your ground against the pouring rain because you believe your cause is a noble one. You were peaceful, you showed your allegiance to the Yang diPertuan Agong and sang the national anthem with pride, and you demonstrated clearly that you are indeed a nation united as Bangsa Malaysia.

They say that you gathered because you cannot accept defeat while they have won legitimately. This is a gross insult. It is also a blatant lie. The truth is your victory has been stolen from you. How can that be acceptable? It is they who cannot accept defeat and have resorted to this deceit, fraud and cheating to stay on to power. You are on the side of truth and truth will triumph over falsehood.

Our mission is clear. We will continue to protest against this fraud and this disgraceful act of denying the people their victory. You have every right to be outraged that your overwhelming vote for change has been hijacked. You have every right to feel hurt and insulted by the accusations of being ungrateful and greedy just because you voted for Pakatan. They are now playing with the fire of racism and hate-mongering and trying every means possible to intimidate you. But I am confident you are not afraid. You will show the illegitimate UMNO-BN government that your voice is not so easy to silence. You will show them your steely resolve and the courage of your convictions. You will show that you won't stop until justice and victory is returned to you. In all these endeavours, I give you my word that the Pakatan Rakyat is totally with you. We will stand firmly by you all the way. We will never surrender.

Malaysia's opposition on Wednesday raised the stakes in its campaign against alleged fraud during the May 5 election as tens of thousands of people joined a mass rally on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur even as the government rejected official observers’ conclusion that the poll was only partially free and not fair.

People started arriving in the stadium as early as 6pm local time and two hours later traffic on the major highways nearby was at a standstill. Many abandoned their vehicles and walked. Highways became car parks as did some petrol stations.

The stadium was packed to capacity with crowds thronging the surrounding roads and parks.

“This is the beginning of a battle between the Rakyat [opposition political party] and an illegitimate, corrupt, and arrogant government,” Anwar Ibrahim, who heads the three party opposition coalition, told the crowd.

A team is collating data on alleged irregularities, focussing its attention on around 30 seats where it feels the results were questionable and where the margin of victory was small.

The ruling Barisan Nasional, the world's longest governing electoral coalition, got 133 seats with 47 percent of the popular vote. Pakatan, the opposition alliance, secured 51 per cent of the popular vote, but only 89 seats. Independents got the remainder. The election, the most intensely fought in Malaysian history, marks the first time Barisan has lost the popular vote.

Integrity issues

Concern about the integrity of Malaysia's electoral system has triggered mass street protests in the past few years, led by the civil society group Bersih, the Malay word for clean. The group put forward a number of proposals to improve the system ahead of Sunday's vote, but the Elections Commission adopted only a few of them including the use of indelible ink and the deployment of official observers.

In their interim report, presented first to the EC and then released to the media on Wednesday, some of those observers concluded that the election was, "only partially free and not fair".

The observation mission, led by the think-tanks Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) and the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS), focussed on Peninsular Malaysia, deploying 325 observers to 99 constituencies throughout the campaign period. Appointed by the EC, its terms of reference were kept secret.

The report noted that the mainstream media, dominated and owned by Barisan was "heavily biased" in its favour, that government and military facilities were used for campaigning and there was a lack of trust in the EC and the electoral roll. The observers stressed too the lack of transparency in relation to political financing and the distortions created by vastly different constituency sizes, meaning that a vote in the country's smallest constituency is worth nine in the largest.

"A lot of these irregularities are significant and important,' said CPPS' Ramon Navaratnam who was an advisor to the mission. "There's this big problem with delineation. Unless you solve that problem it's always going to be viewed as unfair."

IDEAS founder and chief executive, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, said the outcome was the "best result that we can get bearing in mind all the challenges that we are facing".

IDEAS and CPPS will release a final report once the EC, which is part of the Prime Minister's Office, has responded to its findings. Merdeka Center, the country's most respected polling organisation, which was also part of the official mission, will release its conclusions next week.

In a statement in response to the interim report, the government said it rejected some of the “accusations” because it believed they had gone beyond their scope of work.

“This report strays far outside the original mandate, by choosing to provide 'context' by taking a 'long-term view… [over] the last few years', rather than just the election period itself,” the statement said.

On Tuesday it accused the opposition of making a "host of unsubstantiated allegations about the elections”.

‘People’s Tribunal’

Even before polls opened on Sunday there were concerns about the integrity of the electoral roll, with analysts noting large increases in voters which were not linked to patterns of population growth. Reports that thousands of people were being flown from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur on specially chartered flights, acknowledged by Barisan as "normal" and paid for by "friends", also triggered outrage and online campaigns to stop "foreigners" voting that sometimes descended into racism.

On the voting day itself, there were problems with indelible ink, spoilt votes actually exceeding the winning margin and reports of vouchers and cash being given to voters. As Singapore Management University's Bridget Welsh noted in a report, such issues become "more salient" when a third of all seats were won by margins of less than 10 per cent.

Bersih, which mounted its own unofficial monitoring mission known as PEMANTAU, on Monday noted "serious electoral fraud" and alleged that some of its volunteers had been harassed by Barisan's party workers.

It has set up a "People's Tribunal" to investigate the claims – they're expected to work closely with opposition politicians who are doing the same.

Anwar has promised a "fierce" campaign to highlight the irregularities.

The rally attracted Malaysians from all walks of life and ethnicities. They thronged the stadium, packed the field and spilled out onto the surrounding streets.

Dressed mostly in black and waving flags of the three main opposition parties, they shouted and waved the flags of the three parties. Some sat on motorbikes, others hung from the gates to get a better view.

“People in the city are more informed but people in the villages are more followers,” said a local resident who only wanted to be named as Mr Sathien. He joined the rally with his wife. “Malaysian elections have never been fair. It began with gerrymandering. This protest will show the world that Malaysian elections are not fair. That’s the intention.”

Malaysia's racially divisive election result has sparked a battle within the country's ruling party that is likely to slow Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's drive to reform the economy and roll back policies favouring majority ethnic Malays.

Najib's Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition retained power in Sunday's election but the coalition lost the popular vote and turned in its worst-ever electoral performance as it was heavily abandoned by the minority Chinese and rejected by many voters of all races in urban areas.

Najib was quick to blame the outcome on the swing by Chinese voters to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance, putting a racial interpretation on the result that has struck a chord with traditionalists in his Umno.

Umno, which dominates BN, now faces a leadership election in October or November that is likely to be fought between traditional and reformist wings.

"The ideological lines have been drawn within Umno," said Khairy Jamaluddin, a reformist who heads the party's Youth wing, in a posting on Twitter. "Game on."

Any major reforms are likely to be postponed until the leadership is decided, although Najib has said he will push for national "reconciliation" and press ahead with a US$444 billion (RM1.3 trillion) economic masterplan aimed at attracting investment and doubling incomes by 2020.

Conservatives have blamed ethnic polarisation and Chinese "disloyalty" while reformists have urged Najib to expand steps to make Umno more inclusive beyond its base of poor, rural Malays.

Utusan Malaysia, a newspaper controlled by Umno, sought to portray Sunday's election result in racial terms, with one headline saying: "What more do the Chinese want?"

Former and longest-serving prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, a powerful figure in Umno, was quoted by local media as saying "ungrateful Chinese" and "greedy Malays" were to blame for the result.

"It may be the starting shot of what's to come for Najib," Oi Kee Beng, deputy director of Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said of conservative reactions to the result. "At the same time, I think he is their (Umno's) best asset despite everything."

FRAUD

Najib also has to deal with a strong opposition that is claiming that BN won the election through fraud. Yesterday, tens of thousands of opposition activists thronged the Kelana Jaya stadium in Petaling Jaya in response to a call from Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

"This is merely the beginning of the battle between the people and an illegitimate, corrupt and arrogant government," Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, told the crowd, many of whom wore black to symbolise mourning.

Najib, the 59-year-old son of a former prime minister, had far higher approval ratings than his party in the run-up to the election and has few obviously strong rivals to replace him.

Taking power in 2009, he staked his fortunes on reforms aimed at spurring growth, increasing transparency and dismantling affirmative action policies.

But Najib's ambitions have been curbed by conservative interests within Umno. He has failed to come up with major steps to roll back the ethnic privileges that are seen as having benefited an elite of well-connected Malays more than the poor majority.

The government does not provide an ethnic breakdown of the population, but Malays make up about 60 per cent of the 28 million people, while Chinese comprise more than 25 per cent. The country also has a significant minority of ethnic Indians.

BN won 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament, but only 47 per cent of the popular vote compared to the opposition's 50 per cent.

"The polarisation in this voting trend worries the government," Najib said. "We are afraid that if this is allowed to continue, it will create tensions."

But BN has also come in for criticism from younger voters for corruption and patronage politics that critics say have been the hallmark of its 56 years in power.

Liew Chin Tong, an opposition DAP MP from Johor, said Najib appeared to be taking the wrong message from the election result.

"It was not just the Chinese who swung against Barisan Nasional. There were many young first-time and second-time voters who voted against BN," he told Reuters.

Najib now looks more vulnerable to traditionalists in his party who are opposed to his tentative steps to phase out the policies that favour ethnic Malays, introduced two years after traumatic race riots in 1969.

Those policies have been a pillar of Umno's support but have been a prime cause of ethnic Chinese and Indian alienation and investors say they stunt growth and investment in Southeast Asia's third-largest economy.

Najib's efforts to roll back these policies and other politically sensitive reforms — such as the introduction of a consumption tax to reduce Malaysia's dependence on oil revenues and lowering fuel and food subsidies to tackle a chronic budget deficit — could be put on the backburner for now.

"The outlook for direct investment will remain uncertain until it becomes clearer whether or not Najib's reform-minded policies will continue," HSBC economists said in a note after the result.

Liew said Najib's choices of Cabinet members in the coming days would be a crucial indication of whether his new government would try to appeal across ethnic groups or only to its Malay base.

"His comment on the Chinese is rhetoric," Liew said. "What we need to see is who he will include in his Cabinet. Will it be made up of Umno extremists or younger members from the middle ground? We also have to see if he will include the Chinese." — Reuters

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has pledged more rallies across the country for a "national consensus" to question the legitimacy of the re-elected Barisan Nasional (BN) government over allegations of electoral fraud, starting with Penang this weekend.

He told over 60,000 people at a rally in Stadium MBPJ here last night that their attendance would send a message to BN that its lacklustre election victory was not due to a "Chinese tsunami" as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had said, but a "Malaysian tsunami" of all races.

"I want to show Najib this is not a Chinese battle, this is not a Malay battle. We will go to every corner of this country to show we have the support of Malaysians," Anwar said in a rousing speech.

Observers said the multiracial crowd that packed like sardines into the stadium — usually with a capacity of 25,000 — reflected his claim. The roads outside the stadium were a giant parking lot for kilometres as more tried to cram into the stadium.

A mixed group of young people who had just met held up placards reading "Cina Kawan Saya" and "Melayu Kawan Aku" while they took a photograph together.

Khamis Ahmad Kamil, a 67-year-old ex-soldier, told The Malaysian Insider: "What was Najib talking about? There are so many races here. Everyone is here sitting and standing for one thing — clean elections."

A view of the crowd at last night's rally. — Picture by Saw Siow FengAnwar told the crowd: "There are people who ask me to retreat, but I want to tell you, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won! Because PR won, I will never retreat!"

The Permatang Pauh MP and electoral reform group Bersih have announced that they are withholding their recognition of BN's win in the general election until the allegations of vote-rigging are fully verified and investigated.

During the campaign and polling period, BN had been accused of vote-buying with cash handouts, conspiring with the Election Commission (EC) to use "indelible ink" that proved to be easily washed off to allow double voting, and flying planeloads of foreigners from east Malaysia to vote in crucial constituencies in the peninsula.

Riding on the popular vote, Anwar pointed out that despite BN's cheating tactics, 51.4 per cent of Malaysians and about 55 per cent of Perak folk supported PR though this did not translate into an opposition win at the federal level or in the northern state.

With only 48.6 per cent of the popular vote, BN managed to keep its mandate to rule the country due to a history of gerrymandering and delineation of constituencies skewed in favour of BN.

He said that as a consequence, the results of some 30 federal seats are in doubt, bringing into question the standing of the BN government that was formed with just 133 seats, 21 seats more than the 112 required to win by a simple majority.

"It does not matter if you crown yourself, Najib knows there is the problem of legitimacy," he said, to rip-roaring hoots from the crowd.

Despite the sombre dress code of black to connote the "death" of democracy, colourful party flags and umbrellas brightened up the dark sea as Anwar led the crowd in unison chants of "Reformasi!" and "Ubah!"

The swelling crowd was alive with energy and a sense that an injustice had been done, as Anwar added a new battle cry to his already-formidable ammunition: "Suara rakyat, suara keramat!"

"I see all these people here, and I am surprised how Pakatan can lose with all this support. How is it that BN can win? They must have made a mistake. I want a recount, or a re-election," ex-soldier Khamis also said.

Another view of the huge crowd at last night's rally. — Picture by Saw Siow FengAnwar urged the crowd not to be afraid through the coming weeks, saying: "We are on the side of a just, peaceful struggle against a corrupt and arrogant Umno/BN."

He has 21 days to file a court petition for a review of the results and if the existence of electoral fraud is proven, a High Court judge will declare the election result invalid and call for a re-election.

A 21-year-old Malay student told The Malaysian Insider that attending the rally had made him feel united in a common cause with his fellow Malaysians and that he was optimistic about what might happen in the next few weeks.

"I think this rally has given Malaysia new hope. I think something could change. There could be a re-election and the results could change," he said.

Kumaravignesh Jagatheesan, a 23-year-old student, also said he wants a re-election because he wants Anwar to be the new prime minister as a man of "calibre" who stands for democracy.

When asked how he would feel if re-election did not pan out, he joked: "I'll change country!"

The rally was a peaceful one and no police presence was seen or felt.

In a show of unity and neighbourly civic-mindedness, rally-goers helped each other navigate some of the logistical difficulties.

When the stadium was filled to the brim and there was no longer any way in on street level, groups of Malaysians helped each other scale the stadium walls with only a rope, buffered by support on both sides.

When the rally concluded and the crowd had to pick their way out in the dark, Malaysians stood guard at every gaping drain in the ground, shining their torches into it to prevent others from falling in.

Several also acted as citizen traffic police in an attempt to control and ease the jam in the area, which saw many rally-goers park several kilometres away from the stadium and walk the distance.